General notes and info

Who lives in the D-List world?

Roughly 9 billion people. There used to be a lot more, but several near-world-ending catastrophes in just a few short decades has a tendency to take a toll. Most of who remain are just trying to get by and have been barely able to hold it together. There are plain-old regular people here, and there are Metahumans (583 to be exact); people with super-human powers. And, just like in any society, there are good folks and bad folks, i.e. Superheroes and Supervillains. In this is a role-playing game, the Players are playing the Superheroes.

Can we have more details about this D-List world?

• The world has lived through multiple near-extinction level events in the last 40 or so years and just a few years ago, the world population was reduced in a matter of weeks to slightly less than half of what it was.  More than a year after the bugs were defeated, three billion babies were born in an attempt to re-populate the globe.
• The foundations of this story and this world were in place long before the Avengers movies stampeded onto the silver screen, but to use The Avengers Endgame as a reference, basically picture your character trying to deal with all the things that happen after surviving the Thanos Snap.  It’s not a glorious life of fun.
• Class A anthropomorphic (humanoid) robots are used at an increasing rate to fill the day-to-day worker deficit left after the bug invasion. Many, like day-care staff, have full skin augmentation to look almost completely human.  Even with robots coming off the assembly lines 24 hours a day, the army of robots the world relies on to keep things moving, barely holds back global collapse.
• Global Unemployment is currently 0.65%.  Think about that. Over 99% of the population of the planet is employed.  
• Over thirty-five percent of employed people work an average of 14 hours per day.
• You still have a small percentage of the people owning a huge chunk of the wealth to be had, but the margins of rich people to poor people got a bit more narrow after the bugs let the “useless” people die.
• You were discovered / recruited about six months ago by the World Metahuman Organization to be one of the newest superhero recruits.
• You completed your training as a superhero 4 days ago and have been assigned to the Gulf Coast Guardian Superhero Team, based out of Louisiana.
• You have relocated to Baton Rouge from your previous home / residence.  Similar to firemen, you are expected to stay in the base’s housing while on duty.  Your days off are your own.
• Episode One begins at your graduation, which takes place on the steps of City Hall in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where the Gulf Coasters are based out of. 
• The D-List world residents, with the exception of the bad guys, hold themselves to a loftier set of mores than what you as players are used to.  These mores / philosophies are taken from the ancient Japanese:
  • Warn rather than Contain.
  • Contain rather than Hurt.
  • Hurt rather than Wound.
  • Wound rather than Kill (at all costs).
  • Kill rather than be killed.
• The bad guys don’t follow rules and have no use for mores, meaning the good guys are typically at a disadvantage.  The big bad guys rule the little bad guys through fear, intimidation and violence.
• Your jobs as superheroes could be anything from running into a burning building to save a trapped person or stopping a rumble between two big groups of rival street gangs to getting a cat out of a tree.
• The D-List world is still recovering from near-economic collapse and to many people, the future seems pretty dim.  To that end, another chunk of your job is to inspire hope and boost morale in the community where possible.
• The D-List world operates on a global economy that has seen some huge inflation over the last few decades.  The global currency is Credits. For easy reference, take today’s current prices of real world stuff and multiply by ten.  So that $900 iPhone that some person has in his pocket costs 9000 credits.
• There are some day-to-day activities in this world that we Players and Storyteller would consider non-standard.  When people aren’t working, they’re typically scrambling for food and other consumables. The robots that have kept this world from overall collapse can only work for so long before they need a charge.  
• There is a country-wide black market that people in the various branches of law-enforcement don’t like to talk about.  It’s not pursued because for many people literally could not survive without it. In many ways, the government had a hard time getting things done before the bugs.  Afterwards it just got worse. 
• Your characters work for the Gulf Coast Guardians.  In doing so, your ‘salary’ is really a stipend and a bunch of free perks.  They’re basic, but, hey, they’re free. Free Government housing with all utilities, internet and streaming services.  Free basic meals, basic health/dental/vision/life insurance. Free licensing (drivers, firearms, heavy weapons, heavy machinery, etc).  Free online schooling. Free unlimited bus/subway/trolley pass. Limited taxi/airline pass. Clothing allowance. Free basic cell phone and data plan, etc.
• Your team has a person who serves as both your Agent and your Publicist.  They get 25% of your salary. The remainder of your ‘income’ is less than 1 pip of Resources.  This means that you could get a bank loan to have a decent moped or own one a high end skateboard, but not much more.  Since all of the basics are paid for, you need to take care of everything else if you want any kind of disposable income for things like taking a vacation at some point or, say to eventually retire, etc.  That’s where your agent/publicist comes in. See point #3, below.
• You can gain money in only a few ways:
  1. By buying Resources at Character Creation (up to the limits I impose in the following sections)
  2. By buying up Resources with xp
  3. By doing personal appearances/conventions, talk shows, TV commercials, etc.
  4. Potentially, other ways I haven’t thought of yet.
• In-game use of money is spent in one of two ways
  • Incidental expenditures like buying lunch. These are not tracked since they’re far too small.
  • Purchasing big-ticket items. (This is tracked as a derivative of “pips of Resources”. I haven’t figured out a good name yet. Stay tuned.) Expending one or more units of big money reduces your Resources rating for some number of months. So you have two whole pips of Resources and have decided to pull the trigger on coughing up a bunch of your hard-earned money for that shiny, new Shield Emitter belt? You can. You’ll be broke for months and when the belt gets damaged in a fight, you’ll need to get it repaired, which costs more money.
• Bank loans — Nope. The Superhero gig is a tough job at the best of times and it’s hazardous just rolling out of bed in the morning. You’re more likely to die at the hands of a Supervillain than you are paying off your loan. In the eyes of a bank, Heroes are a poor risk.
• A word about prejudice. In real life, I don’t care about who you talk to, it’s almost assured that you’ll find someone who harbors a prejudice about some group of people; African-Americans, Jews, etc. It’s very rare to find inter-racial prejudice in D-List World. It’s more common to find prejudice against Metahumans, regardless of skin color. There have been cases where a Superhero has saved the day and then one or more people who were helped by the hero came back and bad mouthed them; blaming them for somehow causing the issue in the first place. Ridiculous, really, but then again, people don’t always think or act rationally.

Big Brother

• Everyone gets a body cam.  All hours clocked as on-duty are recorded.  End of discussion. All streams are uploaded to a secure cloud network.
• D-List World politicians are worse here than in real life. Politicians all over the world fall into one camp or the other:  “Some Superheroes can be trusted” or “No Superheroes can be trusted”.
• If they believe that some Superheroes can be trusted, then that’s not so bad.  Consider them fair-weather friends to the Superhero community. If they are too-big a proponent of Superheroes and one of the good guys goes bad, it means it’ll probably going to hurt their career, so don’t screw it up or they’ll probably turn on you. 
• If they believe that no Superheroes can be trusted (absolute power corrupts absolutely (and all that)), then that basically means that politically speaking, they’ll exploit anything they can to get all villains rounded up and incarcerated and have all heroes put on an extremely short leash, so don’t screw up with these guys either.
• Along with that, over the years, public areas have been littered with security cameras.  This is a direct result of legislation that was passed over 35 years ago to make sure surveillance is in place to capture events in case a Super commits a crime.  It is a testament to the widespread distrust Metahumans initially faced back in the 40’s. The non-Metahuman culture has come a long way since those days, but the cameras still remain.  

Let’s talk about the game

• A few words on this game
  • The System:  It’s White Wolf.  It’ll be very familiar to everyone.
  • The book we’re using: White Wolf Sorcerer book  “World Of Darkness Sorcerer — The Hedge Wizard’s handbook for ideas on Powers, etc. Character Generation is discussed in this site. Please do not use the Sorcerer book as gospel when doing character Gen. I’ve made some changes. See the section on Character Generation.
  • The timeline:  The game starts at the point where the Hunter Characters went back to their world.
  • Pacing:  Your characters are newbies.  You will be low level for quite some time.  In the real world, it takes three to six months to enter a new job and become proficient at it.  When someone changes careers, it may take them several years to become good enough at their job to be well respected.  You will absolutely have the ability to improve your Powers. It will take time and will be expensive — kind of like real life.  Character improvements and xp cost are discussed later.
  • Completeness:  Please remember that I don’t spend 40 hours a week crafting a game system and the mechanics that surround it.  Much of what we’re doing here is cooked up in my car while I commute, get inspired by something cool or have a stray thought while I’m doing something irrelevant.  This site is a living document. It will get added to over the course of time. Other things may get changed or removed if the idea is found to be detrimental to the overall story or mechanics of the game.
  • Human Nature:  It’s a fairly bleak world, in general, but you’ll find that NPC’s have a tendency to behave like regular people when shit gets real.  That can be both good and bad.  
  • How I will story-tell this game:  As always, I focus on Story, rather than getting bogged down with the weight of mechanics.  I choose quickly applied Common Sense over spending time thinking about if something way out in left field would even work.  I keep the story moving as best I can, rather than pause to debate some grey White-Wolfy thing that’s poorly described. I choose “dramatic”, “funny” and “absurd” in place of “slow-paced-Storytelling”, “a-dry-attempt-at-wit” and “too-geeky-and-realistic-to-be-fun”.  In short, there were a lot of smiles and laughter when you folks were briefly in D-List World with your Hunter characters and I want to keep that level of entertainment.
  • Similar to my Hunter game, I treat this game as if it’s a TV show.  Sometimes it’s a single session; Sometimes it’s a two-parter. XP will be awarded at the close of an Episode. 
  • Regarding your character’s Powers (assuming you take them):  The rule of thumb is simple. You are not Superman, The Flash, Green Lantern or Wonder Woman.  You are a D-List Superhero. You have “something” that puts you slightly above the average person.  Within a narrowly-defined set of “right” circumstances, you can probably be considered to be well above the average person. 
  • In short, you can’t move mountains with a thought. If you want a power and you think I might not allow it, then you’re probably correct.